Bioactive Compounds of Seaweeds and Their Effects on Certain Types of Cancer

Abstract

Cancer is considered as one of the major health problems worldwide. So far, no completely effective method has been found for cancer treatment. Therefore, the rise of using natural products has been proposed as an alternative therapy in this regard. For many years, the seaweed has been a source of many functional bioactive compounds including polysaccharides, polyphenols, pigments, terpenes, and many others. These compounds have shown many bioactivities including anticancer activity against different kinds of cancer. Bioactive compounds obtained from the seaweed have been demonstrated to cause apoptosis in cancer cells and trigger cell cycle arrest with low cytotoxicity against normal cells. In this review, it was attempted to shed light on the anticancer activity of some seaweed-derived bioactive compounds.

Keywords

• cancer
• treatment
• multidrug resistance
• bioactive materials
• seaweeds
• antitumor